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Relatively “Unknown” NM Kolade Onabogun of Nigeria Leads the World to the ‘Peak’ of Mount Gibraltar at The 2019 Tradewise Gibraltar International Chess Festival.

NM Kolade Onabogun | Image by Niki Riga source Flickr

A Nigerian National Master(NM) , Kolade Onabogun has ensured that lightning struck twice at the 2019 Gibraltar International Chess Festival Master’s Section.

Gibraltar is located where the Mediterranean and Atlantic Oceans meet and no faint hearted person can rise to the top of the ‘426 Meter High’ rock.

You have to be as ‘Strong as the rock of Gibraltar’ to take a go at this.

However, the highly cerebral Nigerian Chess player Kolade Onabogun stepped into the ‘ring ‘ and has gotten the best of two 2500+ rated GrandMasters to lead the over 200 creme de la creme of Chess players, going into round 3.

In his first win at the Masters Category, the ‘unassuming’ Chess Player forced a win out of a drawn Slav transposed to Dutch Defense end game.

His 40… Be4 move ‘rattled’ the 19 year old GM Dragnev Valentin into making further innacuracies that resulted in an eventual win for the 40 year old Nigerian.

The Austrian Grandmaster (GM) Dragnev Valentin further ‘self destructed’ on move 60 when he played Kf2, thereby further increasing Kolade Onabogun’s advantage.

One of the most ‘romantic’ moves played by Kolade Onabogun was his last move, which was Ka3.

This allows white to Promote his pawn to queen but in turn ‘gifted’ Kolade a Mating sequence.

See Game Here:

On Day 2, Many would have expected the ‘flash’ performance by the ‘untitled’ Kolade to subside, but he went ahead to win a decisive game against another higher rated Grandmaster.

This time around, it was GM Ernst Sipke from the Netherlands.

As at the time of this report, the PGN of the game is not yet available but it cannot be anything short of an ‘outlier’ Performance for Kolade Onabogun to win yet another GM who has held the prized title for over 10 years.

Described as ‘Hurricane Kolade’ in 2012 when he won the National Championship in Nigeria on his return to the Nigeria Chess Scene after a five (5) year layoff, Kolade Onabogun seldom plays major Chess tournaments available in Nigeria due to his ‘engagements’ but has given a strong showing anytime he commits to the game, as denoted when he played in the Nigeria University Games, 2002, where he picked up two (2) Gold Medals amongst a host of achievements.

We hope his tenacity at quality chess play will make a way for him as he ‘trades’ Chess Ideas with the Tournament ‘top Seed’ GM Vachier-Lagrave Maxime(MVL) on board 17 by 3pm (GMT) at the Caleta Hotel, Gibraltar today 24th January, 2019.

We wish him the best of luck.

You can visit the Organizer’s website for more details of proceedings on: www.gibchess.com